Close-up of a fine line black tattoo of two arrows running down the inner forearm towards the wrist, with a thin silver bracelet.

Two arrows on the inner wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo of two arrows runs vertically down the inner forearm, one with a feathered fletching at the top and the other pointing towards the wrist. The linework is thin and delicate, in solid black ink with no shading. The tattoo sits against a plain skin tone, with a fine silver bracelet on the wrist, a grey blurred background and a white top and ripped denim at the edge of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Arrow Feather

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Oda Venn sat on the sill of the fletching shed in Harrowmere counting goose feathers, forty-two of them, grey at the tips, while the tithe-men shouted in the lane. Her grandmother had taught her that a feather wants a steady hand and never a hurried one. Today the hand was not steady, and the cord slipped twice before she managed the knot.

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The lord of the marsh road had sent word that the bridge at Ellmoor would close at dusk unless someone carried a warning across the reeds. Nobody in the village could swim the flood channel, and the riders had all been taken for the harvest levy. So Oda made two arrows, longer than was sensible, and bound a strip of linen to the shaft of the first with tallow-soaked thread.

The first she gave to Tobin the carter's boy, who ran with it to the Ellmoor watchtower and tied the linen to the rail. The second she kept. She set it point-down in the crack of the sill beside the door, where the draught could not take it, so the fletching stood up like a small brown wing against the lintel and the shaft ran down towards the threshold. Her grandmother had done the same with every arrow she never meant to fire.

Two days later the bridge still stood, and the tithe-men had gone home without the quills. Oda left the second arrow where it was. Every morning she swept round it, and every morning its point was turned to the step, as if waiting for somebody to come in from the road.